Ghost Frequency

 Every summer, 17-year-old Tara was sent to her grandmother’s crumbling Art Deco apartment complex: The Opaline. With stained-glass skylights, elephant-head water faucets, and mosaic tiles that formed a celestial map if you looked hard enough, the building was strange, like it had been designed during a fever dream.

Tara hated it.

She hated the creaky floorboards, the faint scent of mothballs and jasmine, and most of all, the antique elevator.

It had a stained mirror with peacock motifs, bronze latticework, and a hum that wasn’t mechanical but musical, like it remembered lullabies from another time.

She’d press her headphones on tight, chewing gum to a beat no one else could hear, and ride up to her grandmother’s floor with a practiced glare that dared ghosts to try anything funny.

Then one day, someone answered that dare.

It was late. Rain tapped the windows like a Morse code warning. Tara stepped into the elevator, humming along to a moody indie song, when the doors clanged shut without her touching a button.

The elevator jerked, then stopped on the fifth floor.

That’s when she saw him.

A boy.

About her age, wearing suspenders over a faded shirt, hair mussed like he’d slept on secrets. He wasn’t standing. He was floating, barely, about an inch above the ornate floor.

Tara didn’t scream. She narrowed her eyes and pulled one side of her headphones down.

“Seriously?” she muttered. “You’re a ghost?”

He blinked, startled. “You can see me?”

“Ugh. Figures this building would be haunted.” She popped her gum. “You’re not here to like, possess me or something, right? Because I just washed my hair.”

He laughed, a soft, echoing sound that made the elevator lights flicker like fairy wings.

“No. I’m here because... I liked your music.”

Tara blinked.

“You were listening to the Smiths, right? ‘Asleep’? I used to love that.”

“You used to?” she asked, suspicion crinkling her nose.

“I died in 1987.”

Tara glanced at the elevator buttons. They were glowing randomly. None of them were pressed.

“Well, you have good taste for a dead guy,” she said.

His name was Elias. He told her he'd fallen down the elevator shaft, chasing after a runaway cat. “Not my proudest moment,” he admitted. “But I wasn’t really living, even when I was alive. Always rushing, reading books while walking, skipping sunrises because I thought I’d see them later. I just... didn’t notice things.”

Tara frowned. She was like that too. Always in her head, drowning out the world with lyrics and loops.

“What’s it like?” she asked quietly.

“Being dead?”

She nodded.

“Like being a footnote in someone else’s dream.”

For the first time in her life, Tara removed her headphones fully. The silence buzzed louder than any song.

Elias smiled gently. “You should smell the air when it rains. It’s not just wet, it’s earthy, citrusy, like a memory.” He floated closer. “Next time you eat strawberries, really taste them. Or listen to someone’s laugh like it’s a song you don’t want to end.”

“You talk like a poet.”

“Comes with being dead. You get plenty of time to edit your words.”

They started meeting nightly. Same lift. Same soft glow. He told her stories of old movies, vintage pranks, and jazz songs she’d never heard of. In return, she brought him music, holding her phone out, playing songs for him in that box of time.

The strangest thing?

She started noticing things, too.

Like the scent of her grandmother’s shawl, cinnamon and old rose perfume. Or the way sunlight made the windowpanes glow like gold-stained glass. She paused between songs now. Paused in life.

One night, she asked, “Is it weird that I think about you... when you’re not here?”

Elias looked away. “Is it weird that I wait for you, even though I have nowhere to go?”

The elevator groaned. They hovered in limbo.

“Would you... kiss me?” she whispered.

He blinked. “I don’t know if I can.”

She closed her eyes.

He leaned forward, and their lips almost touched. It was like a cold breeze wrapped in fireflies brushed her mouth.

Her heart ached, and soared.

The lift shuddered. The doors opened. For the first time, she didn’t want to get out.

“I wish we met when you were alive,” she said.

Elias smiled, his edges glowing faintly. “Maybe you’ll find someone real. But until then... I’ll always be here when you need to pause.”

She stepped out, turned, and he was already fading.

That night, she sat by her window, headphones off. Just listening. To rain. To wind. To the city’s heartbeat.

And sometimes, just sometimes, when the elevator moved by itself, she smiled and whispered:

“Hi, Elias.”

And somewhere between fear and joy, reality and something deeper, he was still listening.